Kerala election result 2025: BJP’s ‘R Sreelekha’ wins in Thiruvananthapuram. Know the story behind ‘Raid Sreelekha’ tag
Who is R Sreelekha?
R Sreelekha was credited with reducing road deaths during her tenure as transport commissioner, according to a report in The Print. She even earned the nickname “Raid Sreelekha” for the high-visibility operations she conducted while serving in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). And five years after his retirement, he participated in the competition from Thiruvananthapuram’s Sasthamangalam district. The BJP fielded the 1987-batch Kerala cadre officer a year after he joined the saffron party. Sreelekha, 65, the first woman IPS officer in Kerala, retired from the DGP in 2020 and later joined the BJP.
His stint in the BJP is also important as he had a tense relationship with the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government towards the end of his term. “This is a historic event. Nowhere else has a retired IPS officer contested the Panchayat polls. I think only the BJP can do this. This is an opportunity for me to show that the BJP wants a senior officer to work at the grassroots level,” he had told The Print.
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A controversy broke out on Tuesday after R Sreelekha allegedly shared a preliminary poll result on social media in violation of the Model Code of Conduct. While the post, which claimed that the BJP-led NDA had an advantage in the company, faced harsh criticism from political circles, State Education Minister V. Sivankutty called it a clear violation of election rules. Following the backlash, Sreelekha deleted the controversial post from her social media page.
Currently, out of 100 seats in Thiruvananthapuram corporation, CPM-led Left Democratic Front has 52 seats, BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has 35 seats and Congress-led United Democratic Front has 10 seats. While the NDA, which won only six seats in 2010, made a big leap by winning 35 seats in both the 2015 and 2020 elections, the UDF, which won 42 seats in 2010, fell to 21 in 2015 and 10 seats in 2020.
Kerala election result 2025
After three hours of counting votes for 1,199 local bodies in Kerala, which started at 8 am, SEC data showed that UDF was leading in more gram and block panchayats, municipalities and corporations than LDF. Meanwhile, NDA has trounced LDF in one seat in Tripunithura municipality.
Congress supporters and workers celebrate the victory of their candidate Vaishnava Suresh in the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation elections. Vaishnav Suresh described his victory as “the victory of democracy and truth”. Contesting for the first time, Vaishnava Suresh defeated LDF (CPM) councilor Amshu Vamadevan in Muttada District.
